All articles from Kottke.org
"So, at about 14, I became the team's...
“So, at about 14, I became the team’s unofficial basketball musician,” writes Theocharis Papatrechas. “A big shot earned a triumphant snare drum roll with a resolving crash. And if someone missed badl
The World Press Freedom Index at Global 25-Year Low
Since Reporters Without Borders started tracking their World Press Freedom Index 25 years ago, the global rating has never been lower than the 2026 score. From a summary of their analysis: For the fir
Sounds of the 60s: the IBM 1401 (punchcard collation,...
Sounds of the 60s: the IBM 1401 (punchcard collation, reel-to-reel recorder, etc). These aren’t the sounds of my computing childhood but I imagine they’re nostalgic for some of you.
Jamelle Bouie thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is...
Jamelle Bouie thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is positioning herself for a 2028 presidential run. “Yeah, she’s running.”
Being Fed Content
From an interview (gift link) with Don Hertzfeldt, creator of World of Tomorrow: Not to sound like a curmudgeon, but when I was a teenager, I took the train to go to the record store to find rare stuf
Study: "A few weeks of X's algorithm can...
Study: “A few weeks of X’s algorithm can make you more right‑wing – and it doesn’t wear off quickly.” People using the “For You” feed were more likely to favor GOP policies, less likely to want Trump
Can You See the World When You Close Your Eyes?
Aphantasia (the inability to visualize) is one of those things that I find endlessly fascinating; I’ve written about it a few times since 2016, most recently in response to Larissa MacFarquhar’s 2025
We’re Diversifying the University by Hiring More...
We’re Diversifying the University by Hiring More Crackpots. “For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to
Digg has (sorta) relaunched (again) and instead of an...
Digg has (sorta) relaunched (again) and instead of an underwhelming Reddit clone, it’s now just scraping noted fascist cesspool “X” for AI news and telling us that Sam Altman is influential in AI? Thi
How NASA Built Artemis II's Fault-Tolerant...
How NASA Built Artemis II’s Fault-Tolerant Computer. “Every subsystem must be designed to survive cosmic-ray bit flips, radiation-induced latch-ups, and hardware faults without a single second of down
Remember Desktop Tower Defense ? I played it for a bit...
Remember Desktop Tower Defense? I played it for a bit this weekend and it’s still great fun. One of the very best games from the Flash era.
Taken : this is a web page that shows how much data your...
Taken: this is a web page that shows how much data your browser can collect that websites can use to “fingerprint” your device, even without cookies. “It identified your device with enough specificity
Mesmerizing 4K Video of a Cat-5 Super Typhoon
Seán Doran, who I’ve featured here many times before for his remastered astronomy photos & videos, has taken photographs captured by a Japanese weather satellite of Typhoon Sinlaku in April 2026 and “
Interesting thread about why rural towns don't...
Interesting thread about why rural towns don’t vote blue: they don’t have to because small towns “actually operate very similarly to the ‘socialist agenda’ they pretend to be so afraid of” and “they’v
Wallace & Gromit 24/7 Livestream
Aardman’s official Wallace & Gromit YouTube channel is livestreaming what appears to be the four shorts featuring the duo: A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave, and A Matter of Loaf or D
People Who Don't Like People Are Making All of Our...
People Who Don’t Like People Are Making All of Our Decisions. “We are living in the ultimate revenge of the nerds, driven by a crew of socially awkward tech bros who won’t stop until the society that
Grandma Stand
Anyone of any age can stop by the Grandma Stand in New York’s Central Park to shoot the breeze with a grandmother. The concept has spread around the US and is now the subject of an hour-long document
Where are the public benches on the internet?...
Where are the public benches on the internet? “Like cities that have prioritized cars, visiting the Internet now entails controlled apps and search engines, designed for extraction. There’s nowhere to
Now open in NYC: a pop-up called The Donald J. Trump and...
Now open in NYC: a pop-up called The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, which consists of “all 3.5 million pages, 3,437 volumes, and 17,000 pounds of the released and partially
The Hidden Cassettes . "This is going to sound...
The Hidden Cassettes. “This is going to sound insane, but when I was a kid I found out my dad secretly recorded our phone calls.” (Be sure to read the “What?!” link.)
In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress submitted a petition...
In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress submitted a petition to the UN charging that the “brutality and discrimination” of Jim Crow constituted genocide by the US govt. The US prevented any debate on the p
Someone in a private forum I belong to mentioned fountain...
Someone in a private forum I belong to mentioned fountain pens and thus I became acquainted with the role of a nibmeister, a person who can remake the nib of your pen more to your liking (different an
Wowsabout!
PBS Kids and The Jim Henson Company have collaborated on a kids special called Wowsabout! that focuses on the experience of wonder. Wowsabout is rooted in a rich curriculum developed by Dr. Dacher Kel
An analysis of 18 years of Guardian blind dates ....
An analysis of 18 years of Guardian blind dates. “A surprising number of successful dates include something embarrassing: the bill, a late arrival, a misread moment. Awkward doesn’t mean doomed.”
Pioneering abstract artist Hilma af Klint's...
Pioneering abstract artist Hilma af Klint’s Paintings for the Temple (1906‑1915) will be on display at the Grand Palais in Paris from May 6 - Aug 30, 2026.
The Design Evolution of Screwdriver Handles
Screwdriver handles are sneakily well-designed for a variety of different uses. I mean, who thinks about a screwdriver? But if you look at the handles, well, that’s a complicated shape. And it lets yo
What Can We Do About Partisan Gerrymandering? Jamelle...
What Can We Do About Partisan Gerrymandering? Jamelle Bouie has been on a tear with his analysis and historical contextualizing of the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
Nolen Royalty : "My latest project is Marc...
Nolen Royalty: “My latest project is Marc Andreessen Egg Game - a game about drawing on eggs to make them look like venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.”
The 2025 Alaskan Tsunami That Measured 1578 Feet Tall
Last year in an Alaskan fjord, a surprise landslide triggered a tsunami 1578 feet tall. That’s not a typo…the wave was taller than all but 13 of the world’s tallest buildings. In the early hours of Au
Prophecy At 1420 MHz is the first single from Boards of...
Prophecy At 1420 MHz is the first single from Boards of Canada’s upcoming album. (It’s paired with a short intro track, so we’re basically getting the first five and a half minutes of the album here.)
It's David Attenborough's 100th birthday...
It’s David Attenborough’s 100th birthday today! One of my few genuine heroes.
"In nine experiments involving 1,800 participants,...
“In nine experiments involving 1,800 participants, researchers found that people consistently underestimated how interesting and enjoyable conversations about boring topics would be.”
Rogue One: The Andor Cut
David Kaylor is re-editing Rogue One into what he calls “The Andor Cut”; the trailer seems pretty compelling and well-done. He says this is Rogue One if it was produced after Andor: The original versi
A brief history: lessons from the rise and fall of...
A brief history: lessons from the rise and fall of Reconstruction. “Must America be forever defined by strict hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth – or can the nation finally realize its
The Abolitionist Map of NYC
The website for the Abolitionist Guide to NYC is just getting started, but the site does house an Abolitionist Map of NYC. The Abolitionist Map of NYC offers a geographic survey of incarceration and a
Chess Peace is an iOS puzzle game where you have to...
Chess Peace is an iOS puzzle game where you have to place chess pieces on a board so that none of them attack each other. Simple + clever!
One of the coolest things about honey is its...
One of the coolest things about honey is its theoretically infinite shelf-life. 3000-year-old jars of still-edible honey have been found in Egyptian tombs — they used it medicinally for all sorts of t
Animated Artemis II Photos Reveal Satellites Buzzing Around Earth
Ok, this is incredible: this person on Reddit discovered that if you take a bunch of the sequential photos of the Earth captured by the Artemis II crew and animate them, you can see that some of what
"Podcast sloplords" are flooding the zone...
“Podcast sloplords” are flooding the zone with AI-generated podcasts. By one count, almost 40% of new podcasts are written by AI chatbots and presented by “AI voice synthesizers [that] can sound eeril
Lines, Ranked . "2. Assembly. It’s not glamorous,...
Lines, Ranked. “2. Assembly. It’s not glamorous, but hot damn is it effective.”
A supercut of context-free intertitles from Adam Curtis...
A supercut of context-free intertitles from Adam Curtis documentaries. Even if you don’t know who Adam Curtis is, this is entertaining.
New episode of Great Art Explained on Francis Bacon ....
New episode of Great Art Explained on Francis Bacon. “A new generation was starting to ask - who gets to decide what is right? And who has the authority to tell us how to live?”
20 years ago: a guy interviewing for an IT job gets...
20 years ago: a guy interviewing for an IT job gets pulled onto live TV. “Mr. Goma is being celebrated as a folk hero of sorts for anyone who has ever found themselves ill-equipped for a challenge in
Jon Krakauer writes about what has changed about...
Jon Krakauer writes about what has changed about climbing Mt. Everest since he wrote Into Thin Air. “The deadly hazards I wrote about attracted novice climbers to Everest like gamblers to a slot machi
Infants are dying because parents are opting-out of...
Infants are dying because parents are opting-out of vitamin K shots. “In the hopes of safeguarding their newborns from what they see as unnecessary medical intervention, they have shunned fundamental
My pal Matt Haughey recut the first season of Apple...
My pal Matt Haughey recut the first season of Apple TV’s Murderbot into a 3.5-hour-long movie. “I did it fast so there are a few jarring cuts, but I now have an entertaining as hell movie with zero in
This is nuts: Fred Again has uploaded a video of every...
This is nuts: Fred Again has uploaded a video of every single show he did during his USB002 tour (except Mexico City) — it’s four and a half days long. “im told this is the longest video on YouTube ev
Movie Posters by Eric Rohman
Some nice work here from Swedish designer Eric Rohman, who designed thousands of movie posters in the early-to-mid 20th century. (via meanwhile) Tags: design · Eric Rohman · mov
The official trailer for Christopher Nolan's The...
The official trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey was just released. Really looking forward to this.
What now-familiar domain names looked like before they...
What now-familiar domain names looked like before they were bought by big-time companies, e.g. openai.com was “the personal homepage of a guy named glenn”, doordash.com was a porn site, threads.com so
Pocket forests . "The Miyawaki method of...
Pocket forests. “The Miyawaki method of reforestation inserts small, densely packed wild acreage into urban environs. It’s proving wildly successful.” The key is densely planting diverse & native spec
Could This Fish Be a Notebook? "David Byrne...
Could This Fish Be a Notebook? “David Byrne learns how fisheries from Iceland to the Great Lakes are using 100% of their catch — and shares his tips for making fish head soup.”
A24's Young Anthony Bourdain Movie
Huh. A24 is coming out with an Anthony Bourdain biopic that focuses on the time period around the chef/writer’s college years, when he first started working in kitchens. Directed by Matt Johnson, who
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in black & white with the...
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in black & white with the Japanese audio track “becomes the best ‘Space Kurosawa’ movie ever made”.
Microshifting . "From a creativity standpoint,...
Microshifting. “From a creativity standpoint, it’s good to take breaks. When you stop thinking about a task is when your best ideas come to you.” This is how I’ve worked for the past decade+…bursts of
The Booksellers is a 2019 feature-length documentary film...
The Booksellers is a 2019 feature-length documentary film about antiquarian and rare book dealers; you can watch the whole movie for free on YouTube.
New Banksy: Blinded by Nationalism
The artist Banksy has installed (without a permit, one assumes) a new statue in London that depicts a man in a suit marching off off a ledge, blinded by a flag. The artwork has been dubbed Blind Patri
Designer Jenny Volvovski's collection of...
Designer Jenny Volvovski’s collection of unsolicited book cover designs. “I really wanted to design book covers but didn’t have any book cover work. So I hired myself to redesign my personal library.”
I'm not a fan of the first part of this music...
I’m not a fan of the first part of this music video (reminds me too much of dipshits I had to endure at school), but the single-take choreography from ~4:18 is great.
According to this peer-reviewed paper, the...
According to this peer-reviewed paper, the “screeching sound of peeling tape” is caused by tiny sonic booms. The speeds at work here are in the range of Mach 0.7–1.8. Supersonic crafts!
NASA has released some 12,000 unseen photos from the...
NASA has released some 12,000 unseen photos from the recent Artemis II mission; here are some of the best shots.
The Contiguous 41 States
Nowhere on XKCD’s map of The Contiguous 41 States does it say that you need to find the missing seven states, but that’s immediately where my mind went. And it was a little more challenging than I ant
A 55-minute mix of Boards of Canada B-sides and rarities .
A 55-minute mix of Boards of Canada B-sides and rarities.
"They Would Never Use the Death Star on Us":...
“They Would Never Use the Death Star on Us”: Alderaan Residents Reflect on Their Support for the Empire as a Large Imperial Installation Enters the System. “The Senate was ineffective, and the liberal
The Visual Comedy of Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs
I’m gonna call it: Every Frame a Painting, my all-time favorite YouTube channel, is back. Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos stopped producing their fantastic video essays back in 2017 and while they have pop
How Sylvester Stallone Rescued the First Rambo Film With...
How Sylvester Stallone Rescued the First Rambo Film With a Radical Recut, Cutting It From 3½ Hours to 93 Minutes. “The solution that ended up saving the movie wasn’t much less drastic, producing a 93-
Ohhhhh dear, Richard Dawkins: Is AI the Next Phase of...
Ohhhhh dear, Richard Dawkins: Is AI the Next Phase of Evolution? Claude Appears to Be Conscious. “My conversations with several Claudes and ChatGPTs have convinced me that these intelligent beings are
Unruly Play : "A collection of 169 works of play...
Unruly Play: “A collection of 169 works of play in unlikely places. Games about unusual things. Unexpected encounters.”
Ada Palmer & Bruce Schneier: AI Learns Language From...
Ada Palmer & Bruce Schneier: AI Learns Language From Skewed Sources. That Could Change How We Humans Speak – and Think. “Our sense of the world may become distorted in ways we have barely begun to com
Who Merits the Longest NY Times Obituaries?
Using the NY Times Archive API, journalist Ted Alcorn built Below the Fold, a dashboard through which you can explore the last 25 years of Times coverage: 2.2 million articles containing 1.5 billion w
Am…am I "alternatively influential" ?...
Am…am I “alternatively influential”? Defined roughly as “public thinkers and tastemakers who have real clout in their own demesnes despite only modest internet followings”.
The Supreme Court Is Corrupt. This Is What We Can Do About It.
This is excellent: Jamelle Bouie explains why he thinks the Supreme Court is corrupt and what we (through Congress) can do about it. Not all video transcripts work as text, but this one does, so I’m i
The Film That Attacks You
For his latest video essay, Evan Puschak tells us about Un Chien Andalou, the pioneering surrealist short film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. The film is particularly notable for a shocking shot in
I fixed a few bugs on the Rolodex yesterday — some of...
I fixed a few bugs on the Rolodex yesterday — some of the feeds weren’t updating and modifying sites wasn’t working properly. (Members get the mini-feedreader view!)
"Since 1900, scientists have observed more than 20...
“Since 1900, scientists have observed more than 20 phases of ice, many of them shaped under extreme conditions. The growing list includes hot ice and even ice that conducts electricity.”
On the futility of border walls . "The Ozymandian...
On the futility of border walls. “The Ozymandian ruins of many such walls litter our ancient and modern landscapes, because for as long as humanity has built hard borders, people have inevitably found
The Secret to Success Is 'Monotasking' ....
The Secret to Success Is ‘Monotasking’. “We find that in real‑world work, the more switches in attention a person makes, the lower is their end‑of‑day assessed productivity.”
Farewell, Voting Rights Act
Adam Serwer writing about the yesterday’s Supreme Court decision that guts much of whatever remains of the Voting Rights Act: In states with large Black populations that remain under Republican contro
Come on everyone, we're going to Cursor Camp !
Come on everyone, we’re going to Cursor Camp!
Winners of the GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2026 .
Winners of the GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2026.
The Angine de Poitrine Argument for UBI . "If...
The Angine de Poitrine Argument for UBI. “If universal basic income enables even one more Einstein to become Einstein over the course of the next century, it will have paid for itself a thousand times
Who Are the Unexpected Friends in Your Life?...
Who Are the Unexpected Friends in Your Life? “Little did I know that I would find this kind of friendship with my 70-something neighbor, Jesse.”
"There is a feeling I search for: being in good...
“There is a feeling I search for: being in good hands. It is the feeling I look to give and the feeling I look to receive. I know I am in good hands when I sense a cohesive point of view expressed wit
"Trump did not cause the attempts on his life. But...
“Trump did not cause the attempts on his life. But it would be dishonest to deny that he is responsible for shaping the environment in which we live — for creating an atmosphere in which these kinds o
On May 22, Boards of Canada is doing a handful of...
On May 22, Boards of Canada is doing a handful of listening parties around the world (NYC, Tokyo, London, etc.) for their new album. “Tickets live Friday 1 May. Sign up for access by Thursday 30 April